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Automatic Assignment Rules

Experimental Feature

Labels are an experimental feature introduced in 8.1, disabled by default. To enable labels, set the ENABLE_LABELS feature flag. See Labels for details.

Rules apply labels to every device that matches a set of conditions, so you do not have to assign labels manually as the network changes.

Create a Rule

  1. Navigate to Settings → Discovery & Snapshots → Discovery Data Enrichment → Rules and click + Add new.
  2. In Rule setup, click + Add rule to add one or more conditions. Each condition consists of a device property, an operator, and a regular expression.
  3. (Optional) Add a description of up to 256 characters.
  4. In Labels, click + Add label to add the labels the rule assigns. A rule needs at least one label.
  5. (Optional) Enable Assign also to children, so matching devices also pass their labels to their L2 interfaces.
  6. Click Test rule to see which devices the conditions currently match.
  7. Click Create rule.

Test rule lists the devices or interfaces in the current snapshot that the conditions match in the Matched tab, and the rest in the Unmatched tab. Click Apply changes to return to the rule form with the tested conditions.

Properties and Operators

A condition can use the following device properties:

  • Hostname
  • Vendor
  • Family
  • Model
  • Platform
  • Version
  • Serial number

Each property supports two operators, and both match the value as a regular expression, not as an exact string:

  • Is – The property matches the regular expression. For example, Hostname is ^par- matches every hostname starting with par-.
  • Is not – The property does not match the regular expression. For example, Model is not ^C9[0-9]{3} excludes Catalyst 9000 models.

To match the entire value instead of a part of it, anchor the expression with ^ and $. For example, Hostname is ^par-core-01$ matches only the hostname par-core-01, but not par-core-01-old.

Each property appears only once per rule. IP Fabric combines conditions with AND – a device must match all of them. IP Fabric validates the regular expression when you save the rule.

Example

A rule has two conditions – Hostname is ^par- and Vendor is cisco – and assigns region:EMEA and site:paris, with inheritance turned on.

Every Cisco device whose hostname starts with par- receives both labels, and so does each of its L2 interfaces.

When a Rule Takes Effect

IP Fabric evaluates rules during the label calculation that follows discovery. Saving a rule does not relabel existing snapshots.

Tracing a Label Back to Its Rule

The Rules tab lists each rule’s target conditions, assigned labels, inheritance status, description, last-changed date, and last-changed user. Click the icons in the Actions column to edit or remove a rule.

In the Assigned labels tab and in the Labels tab of Device Explorer, a rule-produced assignment links back to the rule that produced it.